Overcompensating, are we?"

Harry hit him. Draco staggered rather theatrically back into the arms of his teammates, then straightened up and started for Harry, rolling his sleeves up to his elbows as he went.

Hermione closed her book and sighed, bored and irritated. Oh for goodnessśake, she thought. Not this again.

The door to Dumbledoreś office was closed. Charlie sighed. He had rushed over from lunch in an attempt to catch the Headmaster, but it appeared he had wasted his time. He had been trying to get to Dumbledore for several days in hopes of getting the Headmaster to agree to his suggestion that a small group of students, with parental permission of course, be allowed to study dragons. After all, Charlie thought irritably, what was the point of hiring someone with a specialty in dragons as a teacher if you weren´t going to let him teach anything about dragons?

"Dragons are vicious," Snape had said at the last staff meeting. "They are capricious. They like to set things on fire."

"But thatś what so great about them," Charlie had replied cheerfully.

"I see nothing 'greatábout students being set on fire," McGonagall had said in a freezing tone.

"That would depend on the student," interjected Professor Sinistra, who taught Astronomy. Charlie privately rather thought that Professor Sinistra fancied him. She kept sidling up to him in corridors and admiring his dragonhide trousers.

Lupin had been on his side in the debate, but it hadn´t helped much.

Eventually McGonagall had agreed to allow Charlie to take the matter to the Headmaster. Which was easier said than done. It was very difficult to know where Dumbledore was going to be, except at mealtimes, when he flatly refused to discuss anything having to do with work.